Posts on ‘February 10th, 2010’

Chinese prosecutors have indicted four executives of Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto. The No. 1 branch of the Shanghai People’s Procuratorate charged the executives Wednesday with bribery and infringing on trade secrets. All four were arrested last year on suspicion of industrial espionage, but no spying charges were brought Wednesday. The executives, led by Australian citizen Stern Hu, were held without being formally charged since July, as Chinese authorities completed their investigation.

A former law firm secretary is fighting federal bank fraud charges after a partner at a Chicago litigation boutique claimed she stole almost $900,000 from his personal account over 18 months. According to prosecution court filings, a Chicago lawyer, identified as “individual A,” alleges that secretary Crystal Sangiacomo wrote more than 20 checks worth $882,226 from his Fidelity Investments, mainly to herself, and signed them with his signature stamp.

Attorneys Richard Raysman and Peter Brown review some of the emerging standards courts employ before allowing a plaintiff to discover the identity of anonymous defendants in online defamation cases, as well as discuss other practical concerns to address before seeking legal redress.

As the debate over where and how to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged fellow 9/11 conspirators rages on, one judge is quietly handling the only active civilian prosecution of a former Guantanamo detainee. New York federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan has been presiding over pretrial proceedings in the upcoming September trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani for his role in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa: a case that poses some of the same issues as the more controversial 9/11 prosecutions.

In a damning order, a federal judge has found that attorneys Cary Ichter and Guy H. Weiss, the law firm of Adorno & Yoss and their former client “blatantly misrepresented” the law, acted with “dishonesty” and in “bad faith,” and, in Ichter’s case, “violated the integrity of the judicial system.” As a result, a federal magistrate has recommended that the attorneys and their client, the plaintiff in a highly contested trade dress action, pay nearly $312,000 in attorney fees, costs and expenses to the defendants.

A proposal to revamp the law school campus recruiting process is being met with resistance among some of the largest legal employers in New York. Recruiting officials at a number of law firms have raised concerns about recommendations made last month that would restrict them from making offers to second-year law students until January. Critics say it may add to the costs of the recruiting season and make it difficult to manage the hiring process, adding that it may even result in fewer students being hired.